


Blue's Clues

by insteadofjust_invisible



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24068053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insteadofjust_invisible/pseuds/insteadofjust_invisible
Summary: "Martino found out about Filippo and Elia like he was on Blue’s Clue. A trail of Easter eggs, a series of date nights with Nico and game nights with the Contrabbanddieri… until the truth had basically been drawn out for him on a white board. When he looked back at all of it, things were far more obvious than any of them would have liked to admit, but blame it on him being too worried about the maturità, too enamored with Nico, you name it, he didn’t put the puzzle pieces together until there was almost no puzzle to play with anymore. "or Marti thinks Elippo is dating and investigates
Relationships: Elia Santini/Filippo Sava, Niccolò Fares/Martino Rametta
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	Blue's Clues

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 7 (Pride) of [Skam Italia Fandom Events' Final Countdown.](https://skamitaliafandomevents.tumblr.com/) The only reason it comes close to fitting the theme is when/where the fic ends (you guessed it, at Pride), so I decided it was good enough to count.
> 
> Oh, and fair warning, don't take this too seriously, I wrote most of it under the influence of a bottle or two of wine and I only meant for it to be some light headed fun in honor of season 4 (also, don't go around investigating your friends dating history, I guess).

Martino found out about Filippo and Elia like he was on Blue’s Clue. A trail of Easter eggs, a series of date nights with Nico and game nights with the Contrabbanddieri… until the truth had basically been drawn out for him on a white board. When he looked back at all of it, things were far more obvious than any of them would have liked to admit, but blame it on him being too worried about the maturità, too enamored with Nico, you name it, he didn’t put the puzzle pieces together until there was almost no puzzle to play with anymore. 

The clues were left out like this:

**First Clue, March 3rd 2020, 18h34**

Martino went to the Gay Center to drop something off for Filo in Nico’s name and Elia was there, helping around, chit-chatting with people like he knew them, like he always did that. When Marti caught his glance, he pretended he hadn’t seen him, excusing himself from the conversation he was having and disappearing on the floor. Marti tried to follow him, but he hadn’t taken two steps before Filo was stopping him, hands on his shoulders while talking to someone else.

“... that should do. Thank you, Ludo. Marti, hey!” 

“Hi Filo. Uh, is Elia here?” Marti greeted him nonchalantly, trying to get a look of whom he thought was Elia over Filippo’s shoulder. Had he been more focused on Filippo himself, Marti would have noticed how he froze for a split second, glancing backways himself before looking back at Marti in confusion.

“Why would Elia be here?”

“I don’t know, I just… You know what, forget it. Here are Nico’s drawings. He made me promise you’ll invite us to the expo.”

Filo gestured he had got it, too engrossed in the drawings already. Marti was not sure what Filo's project was nor how Nico’s drawings would come into play, but both Nico and Filo would get so excited whenever they talked about this collaboration of sorts that Marti just played along, knowing he would get to see the end result at some point.

“You want to stick around?”

“I can’t, there’s a match tonight.”

Filippo rolled his eyes at him, but hugged Marti goodbye and told him to come back another time when he was free to stick around. Marti left with one last lingering look around the floor; maybe it had just been a fidget of his imagination or a doppelganger of Elia or something. If he stopped for a moment longer outside of the center, looking into the building through one of the windows left open, no one needed to know. But that mob of dark curly hair surely looked eerily similar to Elia’s, especially with the left earring to match.

**Second Clue, April 17th 2020, 23h03**

Marti and Nico were out on a date night. They had gone out for food at this quiet, small restaurant in between their respective places that they both liked and whose owners, an old lesbian couple that reminded Marti of him and Nico, usually gave them a free wine bottle whenever they came by. The food was always hearty there, and combined with the wine, made Marti feel sluggish, his mind and body a little too slow to properly keep up with everything around him. He and Nico made their way through the streets of Rome absent minded, every so often knocking shoulders and brushing knuckles. While Marti loved his date nights with Nico, he always longed for the day they would be able to roam through the city with their hands clasped together, stopping at every street corner to steal a few kisses like the other couples they crossed paths with would do. He also knew Nico felt the same, even though neither voiced these kinds of thoughts very often. Either way, it was no surprise when Nico suggested they cut through Gay Street on their way home, like they had gotten into the habit of doing, especially before, when Nico didn’t have his own place for them to go back to and make out uninterrupted.

“That’s not exactly cutting through, Ni,” the jibe had gotten old at that point, but it never failed to earn him a dry laugh from Nico and the cute eye roll he always did when he wanted to pretend to be annoyed at Marti, so he kept saying it. It was part of date night after all.

Like most date nights, Marti and Nico found themselves at Gay Street by the end of the night, each nursing a bottle of beer they had bought on the way there. They were leaning against a concrete wall, side-by-side, throwing mindless conversation around with some of Filippo’s friends they had come across and knew from other nights like that one. Apparently, they had just missed Filo himself, actually, who was there with his boy of the week, according to Stefano.

“Hmm that’s the second week he comes with him, though. What is his name again? Enrico? Emiliano?” mused Sofia, but no one, including Marti, paid her much attention, the topic of the conversation already having shifted to the upcoming game night Teresa was going to host.

Conversation came and went, but after a while Marti and Nico excused themselves under friendly hollering to make out closeby. That was when Marti noticed a couple across the street, whose guy with his back turned to him had the same style and brown colored hair Filo had grown in the past months, the tips still bleached. While he couldn’t see much of the other guy, he could tell he was more or less the same height and build as Elia, and the unruly curly hair looked sort of the same too, and was that an earri-

“Marti?”

Martino suddenly felt a cold gush of air as Nico stopped the trail of kisses he was paving down his neck, now staring at him in confusion.

“Sorry, I just…” Nico turned to see what Marti was staring at and immediately dropped his head into Marti’s shoulder once he got sight of the other couple, who were kissing like their lives depended on it. It was not an unusual sight, couples getting a little too heated with one another in there, but that one across from there surely took the prize. 

“Do you wanna invite them to join us?” his voice came out muffled, but Marti heard him nonetheless, shoving him on the shoulder.

“Ni!”

“Kidding, kidding. Do you wanna go home?”

Marti didn’t answer, pulling Nico back towards him by the wrist, arms settling around his waist once he got close enough. The message was clear, Nico’s hand immediately coming up to cup Marti’s cheeks as he leaned in for a kiss, resuming with the same intensity they were at before. As soon as their kisses started to get more languidly, in between barely contained smiles and huffled breaths, Marti turned them over, pressing Nico against the wall and finally blocking his view of the other couple. Out of sight, out of mind… he was not about to waste a perfect date night.

**Third Clue, May 9th 2020, 20h52**

It was one of those rare Saturday nights where no parties were being thrown and no one felt like going out to a bar or a club that they found themselves spread out around Nico’s living room, in between boxes of pizza, cases of beer, and Playstation controllers.

Luca and Gio were in the middle of a match - Liverpool against Manchester, all teams were fair game - while Marti and Nico took turns roasting or cheering on them, exactly what Elia had been doing too, until his phone had gone off several times in a row as a series of text messages came in. Now, he was dumbly staring at it with a smile on his face, fingers typing text after text as well in response.

“Ehi, you still with us?” Marti joked, waving a hand in front of Elia… who continued typing on his phone, not paying attention to the other boys in the room.

“I guess not,” quipped Gio, breaking into a convinced smile and gesturing as if to say he was the best, of course he had won, as the match ended and Liverpool was crowned the winner. Luchino threw the controller into the center table with a string of swears, but not even that broke off Elia’s attention from his phone, “c’mon Elia, not even the love birds are as bad as you tonight!” 

“What the fuck!”

A pillow was the solution, thrown by Nico at both Elia and also Gio for his comment, the latter who threw it back at Nico, but to no avail, seeming he was busy exchanging glances with Martino as they took in Elia - his angry expression, the guarded body language, the phone turned face down on his leg, grip on it strong.

“We’ve been calling you for minutes now, bro,” Elia rolled his eyes at that, knowing Gio was too preoccupied with the match to actually care whether he or Marti or Nico were the ones throwing out insults at him.

“Who is the girl, do we know her?” asked Luchino, leaning forward on the chair to grab another piece of pizza and get closer to Elia, sat in front of him on the floor.

“Who said it is a girl?” they all shared unimpressed stares at Elia’s lackluster attempt of a diversion, which prompted him to finally - finally! - lock his phone and put it back in his pocket before continuing “ok, ok, give me the controller, it’s my turn now. Who am I playing against?”

Elia only grabbed his phone occasionally through the rest of night, and Martino couldn’t help but stare every time he did so, as if he had suddenly gained x-ray vision and could see through the phone to read Elia’s texts. More than that, however, his mind kept hearing ‘who said it is a girl?’ What if Elia truly meant that, not in the sense that it had been a classmate or a family member he was talking to, but what if it was a boy he was texting with?

**Fourth Clue, May 25th 2020, 07h39**

Martino and Giovanni were waiting for Elia by the school gates to get a cheat sheet for the Physics test they had that day. Elia was usually right on time to school, but the clock was ticking closer and closer to the time the first bell rang and he was nowhere in sight, no replies to the text messages the other two were sending him either.

“Elia has been glued to his damn phone recently, but when we need him, he suddenly decides to go on a technology cleanse,” Gio complained, checking his phone for the tenth time that minute. Marti chuckled in agreement, staring down at his own phone. Where was Elia when they needed him?

Students passed them by in that weird jog-like walk people did when they were about to be late, the first bell not even two minutes away from ringing. Gio was about to start another grumble about Elia’s tardiness when Marti got distracted by the sight of a very familiar blue car turning around the block. Hadn’t Eleonora just walked in with Eva and Silvia a few minutes ago? Maybe she had forgotten something at home? But Filippo wouldn’t be so kind as to bring it to her, would he? And if he was, where was Eleonora to grab it? Martino turned around to see if he spotted her coming out of the school, but the quad was empty. Weird. That was Filo’s car, wasn’t it? He didn’t know that many people who owned bl-

“Ehi, chill Garau, I’m here now!”

Elia’s shout startled him from his reverie, the boy in question walking down the street with no worries in the world, like they weren’t seconds away from being late. Marti belatedly noticed the blue car - Filo’s - driving away in the meantime. As soon as Elia got close enough to them, Gio took him on a loose headlock and roughly messed with his hair, “took you long enough, zi”

“Ha ha. I slept past my alarm this morning.”

The bell rang then, causing the three boys to sprint into the school as Elia messily handed them the cheat sheets he had promised and making them all forget about his tardiness for the time being. Hopefully that sheet would be enough for them to pass.

  
  


That afternoon, however, Marti couldn’t ignore it any longer, and as if he was actually on Blue’s Clues, when he arrived at Nico’s apartment, a little before the other boy did, he settled at the dining table, concentrated as if he was going to study, and wrote down every little weird thing he had noticed Elia doing or not doing recently. This was how the list ended up looking like:

_Are Filo and Elia dating??_

_Clues_

  1. _Elia was at the Gay Center helping around (if not him, his long lost twin brother or a doppelganger or something) that one time I went to give Filo Nico’s drawings_
  2. _Elia, his long lost twin brother, or his doppelganger was making out with Filo at Gay Street last month_
  3. _Filo dropped Elia off at school this morning_
  4. _Elia has been bailing us off every other weekend with the same kind of lameass excuses I would give when Nico and I first started hanging out_
  5. _Elia has been texting a mysterious someone (Filo??!) quite often_



It was not much, he knew it. But it was a start. Martino was about to call Gio to let him in on his newfound discovery (not that he knew anything for sure, but, you know) when Nico arrived, dropping all of his belonging by the front door in a loud thud, removing shoes and jacket before making a beeline toward his boyfriend, all smiley and content to finally be home. He managed a quick greeting kiss out of Marti before he noticed the frown he was sporting.

“I think Filo and Elia might be dating,” he started, turning his face into a frown of his own, “each other.”

“Ahh… I see,” it’s clear by his tone that Nico was having fun with the situation, but he entertained Marti like the good boyfriend he was, arms circling around his shoulders, “why do you think that?”

Marti slid the list he had made more into Nico’s view, much less ashamed he should probably feel from probing into two of his best friends' lives like that. Nico’s laugh filled his ears seconds after he started reading through it, and Marti could feel him shaking his head in disbelief above him.

“I’m serious!”

“Have you thought about asking them?”

“I’m not gonna ask Elia if he’s gay, Ni,” Marti said, turning his head to face his boyfriend, effectively making him drop his hands from around him and drop on to the seat next to him.

“Obviously not, but you can ask Filo if he’s seeing someone. Or Elia, for that matter. You don’t need to specify a he or she,” Nico pointed out, still glancing at the list, eyebrows raising up or head bobbing in agreement as he fully took in each proof Marti had written down.

“I guess you have a point.”

In the end, Marti did not ask Filo nor Elia if they were seeing someone, at least no directly. He dropped a few indirect questions and comments here and there, but he figured Filo would tell him if that was the case, or, more hopefully, that Elia would come to him at some point too. Maybe Marti could be his gay guru… Or not, he didn’t really make the type, did he? Not that there was a type to make. He was gay, therefore perfectly capable of helping out a friend come to the realization or come to terms about his own sexuality... Oh fuck, get a grip, Marti. Given the spirals his investigation was giving him, Marti simply dropped the subject for the time being. He had his maturità to worry about anyway.

**Final Clue, June 13th 2020, 15h18**

Martino found the last clue during Pride, of all places. It was his first Pride - the year before, Nico hadn’t felt much up to it and, at the time, maybe Marti had not been all that comfortable yet with the idea of being so out there with their relationship either, so they had skipped, spent the whole day at Nico’s instead, watching pretentious artsy movie after pretentious artsy movie and having real carbonara that Marti had cooked them for dinner - anyways, it was Marti’s first Pride and the boys had decided they would be coming along in support or whatever. It was probably Gio who had come up with the idea first and then Elia and Luchi just agreed to tag along for the party and the opportunity to get drunk in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. But that had been back in January or so, and quite honestly Marti thought they had forgotten about it. Then, the weekend before Pride was taking place, Elia had texted them in the group chat with a lame excuse as to why he was bailing on them that night, again, and an even lamer excuse as to why he wouldn’t be able to make it the next weekend either, sorry guys.

Come Saturday, Marti, Nico and Gio made their way to where they had agreed to meet Luchino and the girls - who had last minute decided they also wanted to go - sans Elia, who had never elaborated on his excuse as to why he couldn’t come and decided to just ignore them all on the group chat, which, again, was something that had been happening quite often in the past few months. Once there, they wasted no time getting in the mood, blasting cones of confetti Silvia had brought as they walked along with the parade, having fun and partying it out, sending countless texts to Elia to remind him of what he was missing. At some point, Marti texted Filo and agreed to meet up with him just a few streets ahead of where they were then.

  
  


So yeah, Martino - and Nico and Giovanni and Luca and the girls - found the last clue and consequently found out about Filippo and Elia during Pride, when Filo came up to them in all his glory, electric blue hair and rainbow striped button-up. He had just finished greeting everyone and was showering the girls up in compliments, extending one to Nico as well, who had dressed up for the occasion, and was about to get a go at Marti and the plain blue shirt he was wearing, when Elia showed up from behind him, a bi flag painted on each cheek, both slightly smudged from the huge grin he had on, each hand holding a beer.

“Here, love,” he said, pressing a kiss onto Filo’s shoulder as he passed him one of the beers.

There might have been a huge party going on around them, but it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that one could hear a pin drop around them. No one, not a single one of them, uttered a word as they all looked at one another and then at the newly discovered couple with varying expressions of surprise and confusion. Then, just as randomly, Nico broke out in a fit of laughter so strong he had to hold onto Marti to keep standing.

“Can someone care to explain??” finally asked Eva, looking pointendly at Eleonora as their best shot of said explanation. Elia and Filo had joined Nico and were all laughing hysterically.

“I didn’t know anything, I swear! I’m barely at a home anymore and you know it,” as the girls agreed that was indeed truth, seeing Ele had been spending most of her week days at school or studying at Il Baretto and her weekends at Milan with Edo, Marti turned to his boyfriend, who was just now recovering from his fit of laughter.

“ _You_ knew about it!”

“I don’t deny nor confirm,” he said, hands up in surrender. Marti kept shaking his head in disbelief before looking over at Elia and Filippo, who were regarding everyone with matching grins, Filo’s folded arm resting on top of Elia’s shoulder. Marti pointed at them and Elia was the first to speak, imitating Nico’s gesture from seconds before.

“In my defense, I never actually hid anything from you guys.”

“You never said anything either!” Elia just shrugged at Marti and took a sip out of his beer, clearly he wasn’t going to delve much into the subject, “and you… Filo! I thought you trusted me.”

“Don’t take it personally, Marti, Elia said he wanted to tell you guys.”

“And I just did.”

“Santini!” exclaimed Gio. Apparently, Marti wasn’t the only one baffled by the situation.

The conversation continued from there, not really focusing on the new couple who was adamant at not giving any information about how they had gotten together, though it appeared things had been going on between them for a while already. As the group marched and partied along the Pride route, what Marti couldn’t get his mind around was the fact that Elia actually thought he wouldn’t be meeting up with Filo, his gay guru, the Jack to his Rose, on Pride. Why say he couldn’t make it? Why not say anything at all about any of it? It was not like Marti or any of the boys had made him uncomfortable, was it? Obviously, Luca could be a little tactless sometimes, but it was never in a harmful way, he knew Elia knew that, they all did, they were all used to it by then, for God’s sake.

Or maybe Elia had thought about it and that was the whole point of it all. Escape the awkward coming out conversation and go straight to the point… as straight as he could go, in any case.

Maybe Elia could have told them earlier, maybe Marti himself could have released it earlier - he did have all the clues right in front of him, after all - but there was no point in overthinking the maybes. He was at Pride, with Nico and all of their friends… Marti looked around, sharing a smile with Nico as he extended his hand for him to take.

Why keep living in the past when the future is right ahead of you, ready for you to take pride in it?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come say hi to me on [my tumblr!](https://aspeckof-stardust.tumblr.com/)


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